The authors challenge received wisdom on foreign policy, presenting a stark critique of the international human rights record of the United States and an indictment of the American media and of academic scholarship, alleging their complicity in this record. The two volumes are:

Benign – East Pakistan in 1971, Burundi in 1972; Indians of Latin America, particularly the genocide of the Aché of Paraguay, 1970s; East Timor, 1975–1979;

Constructive – Indonesia in 1965–1966; French in Vietnam, 1950s; Diem regime in Vietnam, 1950s; the United States in Vietnam, 1960s; the United States in the Philippines, periodically from 1898 to 1979, when The Political Economy of Human Rights was published; Dominican Republic, 1965 to the 1970s, Latin America, from the American overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954 to the 1970s;

Nefarious – Vietnamese revolutionary, 1950s and 1960s;

Mythical – North Vietnamese land reform in the 1960s; North Vietnamese in Huế in 1968.